awesome_loader

So you've created your bespoke Ruby application without Rails. Then you thought, "Bollocks, I have to manually require all my application files, and in a certain order! And I have to explicitly define all my submodules - they don't magically appear based on the directory structure like they did in Rails. There has to be a better way!" Well now there is.

Install

Add to your Gemfile.

gem 'awesome_loader'

Basic Usage

Let's say you have a fairly simple layout, somewhat inspired by Rails.

app/models/widget.rb contains class Widget
app/models/billing/line_item.rb contains class Billing::LineItem
app/helpers/app_helpers.rb contains module AppHelpers

Given those files and their contents, this is all you have to tell awesome_loader. Awesome, right?

AwesomeLoader.autoload do
  paths %w(app ** *.rb)
end

Advanced Usage

Maybe your app structure is more complicated. That's fine too. Note the root_depth: 2 argument. That's saying, "Only start creating modules for dirs after the first 2 levels." That means app and app/* won't get any modules, but deeper directories, like app/models/billing, will. 2 is the default, as you can see in the above example.

AwesomeLoader.autoload root_depth: 2 do
  # These files have top-level Routes and Entities modules
  paths %w(app routes ** *.rb), root_depth: 1
  paths %w(app entities ** *.rb), root_depth: 1

  # Load everything else using the default root_depth
  paths %w(app ** *.rb)

  # Load your app's initializers. Any classes/modules in them will be autoloaded.
  require %w(config initializers *.rb)
end

For more details and options, check out the documentation.

Eager Loading

If you're running a threaded server like Puma or Thin, it's usually considered best practice to load everything up-front (at least in production), instead of lettings things load while other threads might be running. The eager_load option will ensure that all files are loaded before the block exits.

AwesomeLoader.autoload eager_load: is_prod? do
  paths %w(app ** *.rb)
end

License